College Football Playoff: How did Student Media at Alabama, FSU, Oregon & OSU Fare?

The Ducks dominated. The Buckeyes surprised. The Seminoles squandered their streak. And the Tide lost their air of championship inevitability.

The College Football Playoff’s on-the-field action was certainly fun and frenetic (and interrupted by too many commercials for “The Wedding Ringer”). But how did campus media fare? Specifically, how did student media at the four schools involved in the first-ever CFP cover last night’s semi-finals/bowl games shebang?

The header, topping a story by Sean Landry in The Crimson White at the University of Alabama, alludes to the Tide’s recent penchant for losing on New Year’s Day in the Sugar Bowl.

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(Side-note: The main photo under the headline makes me giggle. Considering that it’s showing the effects of a UA player laying out a Buckeye, it doesn’t exactly vibe with the header or, you know, the final score. An editorial inside joke perhaps about how every UA fan is feeling right now, a subtle dig at the conquering Buckeyes or maybe just the coolest visual that eds could grab before deadline??)

Editors at Florida State University’s student newspaper had a simple message for fans early in the fourth quarter as Oregon began to pull away: “It’s okay to cry.” :) They then quickly corrected the score they had mentioned in the initial tweet, while sporting a similarly funny apathetic tone.

The wittier-than-you-initially-realize treatise first takes potshots at the entire country before purposefully devolving into cliches and then finally asking existential questions Kostidakis doesn’t feel equipped to answer.

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A snippet: “America is happy, good for them. The team you deemed the villain was vanquished by the good guys in a blaze of glory. The 29-game [win] streak is dead in the water, Jameis Winston’s FSU career is certainly over. You got what you wanted, congratulations. … This isn’t a cohesive column because there isn’t a way to put every feeling into a streamlined narrative. … If we want to get cliche, we can. We can say all good things come to an end, we can say to smile it because it happened, not because it’s over, we can say that Oregon didn’t beat FSU, FSU beat themselves, but none of it matters. It’s just a game, but FSU lost the game, and dammit, does it suck. What do you do now? How do you move on?“

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Just Too Darn Popular: The Lantern

The student newspaper at OSU was apparently so deluged with traffic in the wake of the Buckeyes victory the site went down for a while. As of this morning, it appears A-OK and ready for the national championship in Arlington.

Due to a high volume of traffic on our site, http://t.co/byIJjligGY is currently down. We are doing what we can to resolve the issue.

Most Comprehensive Coverage: Emerald

The University of Oregon student newspaper team stepped up like they did every Saturday this past fall — posting real-time tweets from the main and sports accounts, near-instant vids and photos and “rapid reaction” rundowns at halftime and immediately after the game.

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Coolest Photos: The Lantern

The OSU student paper inserted a visually buoyant, surprisingly lengthy, easy-to-scroll photo set at the start of its main game rundown. It presents a still-frame glimpse of the entire spectacle — from pre-game warm-ups (including a classic shot of Cardale Jones throwing passes in a three-piece suit) to the post-game confetti-strewn celebration. Kudos to photo editor Mark Batke and multimedia editor Chelsea Spears.